I agree with Chris except that I would shorten his statement: "If you meet the technical and business criteria, you're in." to simply "If you meet the technical criteria, you're in."

In other words, there ought to be no "business criteria" - It is simply none of ICANN's concern, nor ours as members of the community of internet users, what someone's great or silly business plan might be.

TLDs are not airplanes - if a TLD crashes there are no innocents who are hurt, at least not if the buyers of names in that TLD are adequately informed by the TLD operator about what they are buying. And I'd leave that to existing consumer protection and other laws that deal with fraudulent practices and the scope of warranties.

ICANN has created the glamour that TLDs are something special that have to be evaluated and deliberated carefully. That always has been nonsense - but it is a glamour that does bring in a lot of revenue to a cash-starved ICANN.

In reality, one should be able to obtain a TLD with about the same degree of effort and cost as getting a license to drive an 18 wheel truck - in other words, it would involve some scrutiny of skills and some small license cost (measured in tens or hundreds of dollars, not tens of thousands of dollars.) It would involve no deep background checks nor inquiries into the motivation or finances.